Pentax Optio 330 Review, Phil Askey, October 2001

Review based on a production Optio 330, firmware v1.10

It's a big picture, but in reality the Optio 330 is about half the size of how the image above will look on your screen. It measures just 92 x 62 x 31 mm (3.6 x 2.4 x 1.2 in) and that makes it only just bigger than Kyocera's tiny S3. The Optio 330 was first announced back on the 29th of May, although we saw shots / leaks of it early than that. It's an ultra-compact, steel cased, three megapixel, three times optical zoom digital camera with it's own proprietary Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery and a Compact Flash Type I slot.

The Optio 330 is clearly aimed as a pocketable 'take anywhere' digital camera which can still deliver high resolution and a usable 3x optical zoom. Just to add to the mix Pentax also recently revealed the Optio 430, a four megapixel version of the Optio 330.

If you're new to digital photography you may wish to read the Digital Photography Glossary before diving into this review (it may help you understand some of the terms used).

Conclusion / Recommendation / Ratings are based on the opinion of the reviewer, you should read the ENTIRE review before coming to your own conclusions. Images which can be viewed at a larger size have a small magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner of the image, clicking on the image will display a larger (normally 960 x 720 or smaller if cropped) image in a new window. To navigate the review simply use the next / previous page buttons, to jump to a particular section either pick the section from the drop down or select it from the navigation bar at the top. DPReview calibrate their monitors using Color Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can make out the difference between all of the (computer generated) grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.

This review is Copyright 2001 Phil Askey and the review in part or in whole may NOT be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from the author. For information on reproducing any part of this review (or any images) please contact: Phil Askey.